Participating teams

Charlotte Bantams. Formed in 1932 and playing
primarily teams based along the Atlantic Coast, the Bantams amassed a
10-3 record in 1933. [1
]

Dallas Rams. Founded in 1933 with the expressed
purpose of joining the new AFL as a natural rival of teams in
Oklahoma City and Houston, the Rams played only three games that
year. [1
]

Louisville Bourbons. Founded in 1931, the
Bourbons played primarily against opponents in the Midwest,
including the Portsmouth
Spartans of the NFL. [1
]

Memphis Tigers. Formed in 1927 as "New Bry’s
Hurricanes" and renamed in 1928, [2
] the Tigers were the dominant football team of
the South from 1929 to 1932. In 1929, Memphis defeated the Green Bay
Packers 20-7 (the Packers eventually won the 1929 NFL
championship without losing a league game). [1
]

St. Louis Blues. Formed by the league after the
St. Louis
Gunners rejected the league's overtures for membership. Sports
promoter Bud Yates was credited with founding the team after being
general manager for the 1926-27 St. Louis Blues independent team
(which lost only one game in its two-season existence).[3]
and founding crosstown rivals St. Louis Gunners (in 1931) [1
] and St. Louis Veterans (in 1932).[3]
When the Gunners joined the NFL in November 1934, the Blues moved
to Kansas City.[1
]

Tulsa Oilers. Formed in late 1933 as the Tulsa
Drillers, the team played (and lost) only three games that season
(two against Oklahoma City, one against the St. Louis Gunners).
Coached by Billy Boehm, the team featured former members of the Tulsa University football team.[1
]

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Teams who
joined the league but were forced out

Oklahoma City Chiefs. Formed in 1932, the
Chiefs lost only one game in their inaugural year (to Portsmouth)
and continued their success in 1933 as they staked their claim as
being one of the two strongest minor league teams (along with the
St. Louis Gunners). Because their home stadium could seat only 2000
people, the league dropped the Chiefs when the team’s efforts to
secure a "suitable" stadium. The team ceased to exist two months
later.[1
]

Houston. Having joined the league despite not
having a team organization or player roster, Houston was dropped
when Oklahoma City was given the boot. The team never came into
existence.[1
]

Origin of
league

After the collapse of the first American Football League and the
paring of ten teams from the NFL after the 1926 season,
professional American football was concentrated in the American
Midwest and Northeast. The Memphis Tigers developed into a strong
independent football team, comparable to those based in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In 1929, a Memphis team that was temporarily enhanced by the
addition of Ken Strong
and several other NFL players defeated the Green Bay Packers. The
victory prompted Tigers owner S. A. Goodman to claim the "national
pro championship." Memphis was not seriously challenged by non-NFL
teams in 1930, but in 1931, promoter Bud Yates founded the St.
Louis Gunners with future Hall of Fame memberJimmy Conzelman
as the team’s coach. After a respectable 5-2-1 record in 1931
(playing all of its games at Public Schools Stadium in St. Louis),
the Gunners changed coaches (to Bullet Baker) and played a more ambitious
schedule in 1932, playing the Tigers to one win, one loss, and one
tie – a November 27, 1932, game between the two teams was billed as
for the "independent pro championship" ended with a 0-0 score.[3]

The 1931 season saw the start of the Louisville Bantams, which
played most of the games in its inaugural season against teams
based in Ohio (including the Ironton Tanks); the following season saw
the formation of the Charlotte Bantams and the Oklahoma City
Chiefs. By 1933, both Charlotte and Oklahoma City were not only
able to compete toe-to-toe with Memphis and the St. Louis Gunners,
but both dominated the Tigers in three out of four games that
year.[1
]

On November 14, 1933, Memphis Tigers owner S. A. Goodman,
boasting that the Tigers have been playing "as good football as in
the NFL" and that St. Louis and Oklahoma City "could win… in the
NFL at any time,"[1
] announced plans for a new major football league,
which he named the American Football League. In the three weeks
after the announcement, the Gunners defeated NFL teams in
successive games[3]
and a new team in Tulsa, the Drillers, came into being and played
competitively against Oklahoma City and St. Louis, losing all three
of their games.[1
]

Formation

In 1933, Goodman stated "We don’t want a Southern league, nor a
secondary league." Yet by the summer of 1934, his new league was to
have teams representing Memphis (Tigers), St. Louis (Gunners),
Oklahoma City (Chiefs), Tulsa (the newly renamed Oilers), Charlotte
(Bantams), Louisville (Bourbons), Dallas, and Houston. Even then,
plans for the league had to be altered as neither Dallas nor
Houston had organized teams at that point… and the Gunners did not
want to join the embryonic league as they had aspirations for
joining the NFL (in fact, the team bought the NFL’s Cincinnati Reds franchise for
$20,000 on August 8, 1934, but the sale was vetoed by the NFL team owners).[3]

In August, Oklahoma City was expelled from the league because
their home stadium (a minor league baseball park) could hold only
2000 people in the grandstands (the Chiefs would continue as an
independent team for two more months before folding); at the same
time, Houston was dropped from the lineup as there was no progress
in organizing a football team in time for the start of the season.
On the other hand Dallas was successful in forming a new
team, the Rams. Also in August, Bud Yates (founder of the St. Louis
Gunners in 1931 and the St. Louis Veterans in 1932) was enlisted to
organize a third St. Louis team, this time called the St. Louis
Blues, which featured former Gunners Dick Frahm and John Breidenstein.[3]

Competition and
dissolution

By October 7, 1934, the day of the league's first games, the AFL
settled on a double round
robin schedule, with each team scheduled to play one road game
and one home game against each of the other members of the league.
Despite the league's intention, only Memphis and Charlotte managed
to play the full ten games as weather forced the cancellation of
several games.[1
]

By late October, the Blues' supremacy was virtually conceded as
St. Louis was not only dominating each of its games but also
outdrawing the Gunners, which had to cobble together a schedule
after the rejection by the NFL and the reduction of availability of
AFL members for scheduled football games. When the Gunners’
purchase of the Cincinnati Reds was finally approved by the NFL,
Blues' ownership decided not to compete with the newest member of
the National Football League and opted to move across the state of
Missouri, to Kansas City, one-time home of the NFL's Kansas City
Blues and Kansas City Cowboys. After the move,
the former St. Louis Blues became the new Kansas City Blues.[1
]

The St. Louis/Kansas City Blues ran roughshod through the
league, with only a tie with Memphis marring its won-lost record
with a late-season tie. On December 16, 1934, the Blues finally met
the Gunners for the first (and only) time, with the NFL team
prevailing 7-0 before it was disbanded due to unpaid tax debts[3]
(a new St. Louis Gunners team would surface by later 1935, again as
an independent).

Preparations for the 1935 season saw the Blues returning to St.
Louis after the Gunners' dissolution and Louisville playing
exhibition games in September, but none of the other league members
had bothered to assemble their squads, including the Tigers, which
were sited in the league's home city, Memphis. S. A. Goodman, both
the president of the AFL and the owner of the Tigers, announced on
September 26, 1935, that due to "lateness in organizing", the 1935
AFL season was cancelled, but the league would return in 1936.[2
]

St. Louis and Louisville played four games in front of
diminishing crowds before folding; the Memphis squad was
tentatively put together by two longtime Tigers (Red Clavette and
Cliff Norvell) and bankrolled by Wilson Murrah. While the team
managed to play three games (scoring 100 points in the process),
the writing was on the wall: the Tigers (and any possibility of the
AFL returning in 1936) winked out of existence.[2
]

All-League
teams

Despite the AFL’s existing for only one season, it had two
All-League teams, one selected by Associated Press writers in the cities
represented by the AFL teams and one selected by the coaches of the
American Football League.[4]